The Nature of Scientific Inquiry; Is Evolution Science?

That appears to be the usual definition of evolution and I dispute that there is any proof of such changes beyond the observable variations that occur within species, that is, I dispute that there is any proof that "biological evolution may be...substantial" in the sense that a protoorganism evolved to a snail, to a bee etc. What is considered to be proof is not proof.This message has been edited by Faith, 03-30-2005 11:48 AM

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If you decide to not join me at this thread, I'd like you to write, for the entire board to see, that you believe that the hundreds of thousands of scientists who have studied Evolution over the last 150 years are a bunch of moronic dunderheads that have been getting everything completely wrong in all of their millions of manhours of work over the decades.

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Speaking of arrogant, ordering another person around as so many seem to like to do here, certainly is arrogant.I've also said many times, though perhaps you haven't seen those posts, that I consider most scientists to be doing valid science IN SPITE OF the theory they are laboring under. The dunderhead part is the theory, and since everybody accepts it and thinks their observations into it I don't consider the scientists themselves to be dunderheads at all, merely the victims of this theory which is unquestionable, not subject to proof or disproof, testing, falsification or replicability. Remember it is the THEORY that I'm saying does not meet these normal standards of scientific method, not any given scientific observation.You cannot prove anything that happened in the past {Edit: without some kind of witness corroboration from that time}. The best you can do is make educated guesses. That's been my contention, and it would be easier to argue this in relation to the Geological Column {Edit: that is, to the Geological Timeframe which is built upon an ideaolized Geological Column }which I've also said does not meet these standards, than the ToE, but I'll do what I can with that if that is what you prefer.This message has been edited by Faith, 03-30-2005 12:08 PMThis message has been edited by Faith, 03-30-2005 12:11 PM

I'm only talking about extrapolations about the past, and these are not falsifiable as well as being built on years of mutually confirmed plausibilities and affirmation by the scientific community, and scientists are preoccupied with their own specialties more than the theory itself, all combining together to prevent its being challenged from within the community. Besides which, creationists are The Enemy and nobody would want to give a moment's credence to Them. Lots of reasons things stay as they are. Yes, and my point is that testing that could lead to falsification cannot be done with events in the past. I was thinking of the Geologic timeframe, the idea that rock layers are from ancient time periods, and that ancient scenarios built upon all this cannot be tested because the past cannot be replicated.Testing, replication with the possibility of falsification can only be done with things you can actually work with, can see, can measure. When it comes to the past all you can do is infer, extrapolate, guess, deduce, and you can never prove your conclusion by scientific method. It always remains a guess, hopefully the best but still a guess and unprovable. To the extent that scenarios of biological evolution are built on such reasoning they too are not testable or falsifiable. There is no way to prove, test, replicate, falsify, for instance, that birds descended from dinosaurs just from the fossil record and the appearance of similar design factors.However, your following scenario DOES work with testable things: I agree, that's a scientifically formulated question and it should have scientific proof one way or another, as both human and chimpanzee DNA is available for study and there's every reason to suppose genetics always operates by predictable knowable laws, even if they aren't all known yet (unlike radiometric dating which could only be proved valid for ancient ages by KNOWING the age of some ancient rocks already, which can't be known without a reliable dating scheme that's not just extrapolations from extrapolations, and there we are going around in circles).Do I need to know more than basic genetics to follow the necessary chain of reasoning? Are you good at explaining such things in clear terms? If so, proceed and show me how well scientists have proved or disproved that humans and chimpanzees share a common ancestor. Well, I can't answer a generalization like this and I probably can't follow too far into genetics either. This generalization is basically your credo as I have given mine, so it is what we'd need to prove or disprove if it is possible to set up the conditions for that given all the limitations.And may I ask a related question of you since you are apparently a biologist of some kind?I understand that bottlenecks and other events studied in population genetics can be seen somehow in the genetic code? What kind of evidence is this? That is, what does it look like in the genes and chromosomes? It being the case that there's pretty good evidence fo such events in the genome, what would you expect to see in the genetic code for such a bottleneck as the reduction of the human race to Noah and family in the Flood?

Sorry, I keep forgetting this thread is here. But now it's so late it will have to be tomorrow.

Yes, you can prove/disprove some things for the recent past, but what you have for a starting point is something you KNOW happened in the past that you are investigating, the rape murder -- you must have a witness or clear known event from the past for this method to work.In the case of the ToE and the Geo Timeframe, absolutely NOTHING is known in advance about the past, and the entire aim of the theory and the scientific processes is to find out what happened. This is the situation in which there is no possible testable falsifiable theory.EXCEPT I started thinking today about the frozen mammoths and other creatures where it may be possible to get DNA and I began wondering if it might eventually be possible to figure out from their genome how long ago they died -- such as how many generations from their modern relatives they are or something like that. That would be very interesting and the ONLY way I think something very definite about the past might be discoverable and replicable.

You missed the point. The point is that you must have SOMETHING in the past that is known, which includes witnesses if there are any. In a crime scene in recent time you are STARTING from knowns: you have the dead body and can figure out when it happened, and there's other evidence to work from to get at what may have happened. Try to follow the argument here. Are you going to send a man up for murder on nothing but your inferences from the physical evidence? Now, I'll agree that DNA is pretty definitive if you have it, depending on where it is found and whatever is known about a possible relationship between the deceased and the suspect, but the rest could have been planted. In any case you have MUCH evidence of many kinds that may eventually solve the crime for you. And witnesses would be a BIG help. The victim was seen in the company of the suspect at such and such a time etc. etc. Ideally you want a believable confession from your suspect.In the case of the Geo Timetable the thinking processes are similar but you have very few known facts from the scene of the crime to guide you. You have layers of sediment that have turned to rock. You have to construct methods to guess their age and there is no way to verify your guesses as there is no KNOWN age of a particular rock to guide you back past actual observations -- all ages are assigned from inferences built on inferences, even if they are dated by radiometry, because that too is not verifiable before whatever is actually KNOWN in the past which isn't anything older than a few thousand years or less. You have fossils in the rocks. They've been studied so you know how they were formed, but you don't know their age either, and again you have methods for guessing at it but there is no way to verify the guesses as there is no KNOWN age of a fossil to work from. You can't extrapolate from observable processes because they may only hold up for short periods and you can't find out if they hold up for longer because there's no way to set up an experiment in the past.For the ToE, however, I think the genetic evidence points toward variation within a species only, natural limitations to processes of evolution within the species -- the fact that genetic variability or "plasticity" as one creationist calls it, is reduced by selection processes that isolate populations, and this reduction is increased with each further such selection until you have a new "species" which is really a genetically severely limited variation on the species it was isolated from, that is, it has the most severely limited genetic capacity for further change and adaptibility, in other words the exact opposite of what the ToE predicts. Maybe eventually this kind of evidence will become definitive. The ToE is based on unsubstantiated conjecture only at this point.

No, Mr. K., I start from the only actual witness account of events in the past that we have. This gives Biblical YEC's an advantage, far from the opposite. You dismiss it as "religious dogma" but that's just your unsubstantiated assumption, really nothing but glorifed namecalling. It is in fact witness evidence which is a LOT more than evolutionists have for ANY of their wild speculations about the past.

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Faith writes:
I don't consider the scientists themselves to be dunderheads at all, merely the victims of this theory which is unquestionable, not subject to proof or disproof, testing, falsification or replicability. Remember it is the THEORY that I'm saying does not meet these normal standards of scientific method, not any given scientific observation.

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For this THEORY, could you show any specific part that cannot be falsified?

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What part is not subject to testing?

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What, as you understand it, constitutes replicability as far as this theory is concerned?

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You cannot falsify (or prove) that the fossil record is a record of evolution from one species to another. There's no way to test this and there's no way to set up an experiment to replicate any facet of it that I can think of except the chemical processes of fossilization itself perhaps, but that isn't going to tell you anything about the theory of its evolution. This is because it is a theory about the past about which nothing at all is independently known. It is based only on a plausible inference from the appearance of the fossil record, and only part of the fossil record at that.I would have said that you can't falsify (or prove) or test or replicate anything about any part of the theory of descent of species from other species, but the test sfs suggested about setting up an experiment to determine a certain kind of genetic connection between species that is already KNOWN to reflect that particular relationship would be a good one. I have yet to get to his answer to my post, when I'll see what is known about this if anything.You cannot falsify (or prove) the age of any rock or fossil find. You can test its age with radiometric methods but you can't falsify or test the validity of those methods themselves, you can only assume that radioactive decay always does what it appears to do within measurable/historical time frames.For the recent past, the historical past, you may have independent evidence, but for the prehistoric past, nada.

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Faith also writes:
You cannot prove anything that happened in the past {Edit: without some kind of witness corroboration from that time}.

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I agree that you can't PROVE anything that happened in the past except I would go so far as to say that even witness corroboration can be considered suspect.

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Great. I'm glad you agree that you can't PROVE anything about the past. That's the point I'm making. And if it can't be proved that means it's not falsifiable and there are no tests that can prove it and no way to replicate it.

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Be that as it may, I suspect that you are saying that we can't even make come up with anything close to the truth about what happened in the past. Does this mean that we should not consider forensic evidence or conclusions when bringing someone to trial?

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No, of course not. Within historical time there are many more possibilities of independent verification, including witness reports, but also forensic evidence. I should probably change my definition to reflect this difference somehow. It is simply possible to KNOW a great deal more about events in recent time, and yet when it comes to PROOF of what actually happened, you can only get more or less good reasons to believe this or that, not actual proof.

I said that it's the THEORY of evolution that can't be tested, falsified or replicated, but that of course you can do these things with given observations or events like a volcano. Yes, of course you can make such inferences, yes, I certainly haven't denied that, but my point is that that is ALL you can do. In some cases you can come up with excellent ideas about what happened, but all you have is more or less plausible ideas. That is the ONLY test I've ever heard of that seems to me to actually hold some promise of determining something true about past evolution, an actual test, something replicable, therefore falsifiable, and that's why I'm curious about it. But if all you have is inference and speculation, you don't have testability or falsifiability, and that is the case in general for all events in the past. Some inferences hardly require it, such as the inference from the position of the trees in the path of the lava, but some, such as the descent of one kind of creature from another as shown in the fossil record certainly do, and there's no way to come up with such a test for that. Genetics, however, DNA, yes, I can see potentials there for something better than mere inference.

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(unlike radiometric dating which could only be proved valid for ancient ages by KNOWING the age of some ancient rocks already, which can't be known without a reliable dating scheme that's not just extrapolations from extrapolations, and there we are going around in circles).

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Huh? Radiometric dating, at least in its more sophisticated forms, depends on knowing how physics works, and doesn't depend at all on having some sample whose date you know. As we DNA, we have the isotopes, and we know the processes that are involved in radioactive decay, so we can make valid inferences about how long the rock has been accumulating decay products.

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But there's no way to test/verify/falsify that the rate of decay is constant for all spans of time and all conditions and the only way this could be verified is with a sample whose date is known. YOu are in the position of simply trusting that it holds up, but you can't know that.

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My comments come from my professional experience with genetic data; I've seen the utility of evolution in practice. I've tried (for years) to think of ways of getting them to fit a YEC scenario, and I can't come up with one...

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yes, I'm no scientist but I don't have any problem fitting all of it into a YEC scenario. There's nothing in any observation that requires long ages, and nothing that requires descent of one species from another. I don't know what the problem would be. And I'm still curious about what sort of genetic factors you would expect to see between species you think are genetically related.

OK, Mark, I'm finally getting back to your Post #12. Sorry I've kept you waiting so long.

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I'd like to tackle two points, the "what is science" bit, then evidence of macroevolution if I may.

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Science is simply a logical methodological construct that allows hypotheses to be supported or falsified. Data that becomes available that supports a hypothesis is by definition evidence for it, & vice versa.

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You cannot prove anything that happened in the past

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Science doesn't "prove" anything, it simply piles on the evidence to such a point that it would be foolish to deny the theories veracity.

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Well, then, tell everyone to stop claiming that science requires falsifiability, testability, replicability, etc., all the methods of old-fashioned laboratory science.

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In order to be scientific, a theory must be open to revision in the face of new data, yes? Not even creationists deny that. If this is the case then it therefore obvious that one cannot prove a theory to the point where you can state it with absolute 100% certainty. If you do, then you are stating that no new data could possibly be considered, which is of course contradictory, & no scientific theory would or could be held in this regard & still be considered scientific.

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Not sure of the relevance of this, it seems obvious actually, but I'll answer yes.

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If a theory hypothesises that something happened in such a way in the past, & data supports that theory, then that data is evidence of it, by definition.

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Of course. The question is whether the data in question really does support that theory. Most of the creo-evo debate is about interpretation of data, not different data.

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It matters not one iota whether that data supports a real-time experiment in a lab, or a hypothesis that Egyptians preserved their nobility for an alleged afterlife by embalming them. Nowhere, & I mean nowhere, in any scientific or philosophical literature does it state that past events cannot be inferred.

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Nor did I say they cannot. I said that all one CAN come up with is plausible inferences for past events. I said the theory of evolution, and the Geo Timeframe or Old Earth Theory, both THEORIES about what happened in the past, are what cannot be tested, falsified, replicated and so on.But of course many things can be inferred, and then the question is how good is the inference and can the inference --- which, come to think of it, is really a theory or hypothesis, isn't it? ---- be proved or corroborated? An inference about, say, some details in a crime scene, and even the solution to the crime itself, CAN sometimes be pretty much proved if there's lots of data, lots of evidence to check out. But an inference about the distant past cannot be proved, or an inference about any event for which there is no independent evidence.

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This notion is simply an illogical tactic invoked by creationists so they don't have to consider data. It is of course ridiculous that creationists insist that data in support of a theory isn't evidence of it, but there you go!

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I think you have misunderstood the creationist argument. Evolutionists are always challenging creationists to come up with new data but this isn't the problem that faces creationists. It's interpretation of the existing data. The claim is that the data doesn't actually SUPPORT evolutionism, it can merely be more or less plausibly fitted into the concept. The fossil record LOOKS like plausible evidence for evolution but it can't be tested or falsified, it simply remains a plausible inference. Etc. To a YEC the fossil record looks like plausible evidence for a humungous flood. This too can't be tested or falsified. I'm not sure how the ID people deal with the fossils. In any case, all we can do is battle plausibilities back and forth -- and let me hasten to concede that the evolutionists are ahead in the plausibilities war.

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Now, on to the juicy stuff. This is technical, but I hope I've done a reasonable job in simplifying the concepts.

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Cladistics is a method by which we look at as many characters as possible in a given species, & compare them to other species. In such a way we can assess similarities between species & more easily classify them. The result is a diagram like this...

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You may note that the most similar organisms are likely to be the most related, according to evolutionary theory. Therefore, the resulting cladogram, as well as being an objective method of classification, also shows us relationships between taxa if evolution is indicative of reality. If so, we can think of a cladogram as being akin to an evolutionary tree.

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A very big "if", I hear you say!

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Right you are. I just said it.

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How can we test the assumption that relationships between organisms on a cladogram are evolutionary in origin? Two ways, take different data sets & see if the cladograms broadly match (they do), or test the cladograms order of divergence (the point where lineages diverge are called "nodes" on a cladogram) & see how well it matches the rocks. This is the beautiful bit, at a stroke it shows the geologic column to be indicative of reality, as well as evolutionary principles. The matches aren't perfect by any stretch, but when taken en mass, they show a correlation that far, far exceeds what would be expected by chance alone.

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OK, I can only follow this so far. It's clever. I get your interpretation and how it's arrived at but I can't follow the specifics well enough to test it for myself. I studied the diagrams and they appear to be four identical diagrams slightly differently drawn, with one rotated 90 degrees, so I don't see why four were needed and that starts me off wondering what's going on. Then I note to myself that there may be some subjectivity involved in the ascertainment of morphological similarities. The fossil record is of types that no longer exist, so some interpretation has to be involved. Then I wonder if this particular cladogram you've reproduced is THE "proof cladogram" as it were, and if other possible comparisons based on the fossil record don't score so high. {EDIT: This you've probably dealt with in your discussion of SCI variables though.In the end I'm not really sure you've proved anything more than is already inferred from the appearance of the fossil record itself -- that is, the appearance of a hierarchy of morphologies represented there, which is what suggested the idea of evolution in the first place. What the cladogram does is refine this basic inference. I'm really not sure it's added anything new. Maybe I'm just not understanding it well enough, and it is suggestive, even interesting.This message has been edited by Faith, 04-10-2005 02:53 AM

The term was originally yours, in case you have forgotten. Anyway, I have no problem with this distinction. The theory is plausible enough not to present problems to most scientific work, which is involved with the data, with observations, with objects, with sites, with facts. The theory supplies explanations for all kinds of things so you just apply the relevant explanations where necessary and it seems to make a fit, though it isn't that the data have supported the theory, simply that the theory has supplied a likely explanation for the data. If a fit between theory and data isn't obvious you simply think around it, assuming it does fit even if you can't see it yet. This kind of thinking is quite normal and understandable, so scientists who do it aren't dunderheads, just very convinced of the theory, and besides they simply like their work, in the lab or the field or the classroom or wherever, and that preoccupies them, and everybody knows that creationists are dodos, so that sure nips THAT line of thought in the bud if such an errant thought ever DID arise. Basically come up with a way -- a very far-out Plausibility -- to save the theory when they started finding too many things wrong with it? Actually I think this is closer to a tautology than a proof of anything, along the lines of Mark's cladograms, but I'd need you to spell out what is meant by a "genetic tree of life."

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If we had not seen such a convergence, and there had been significant differences between the two trees, Evolutionary Theory would have been seriously compromised.

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But why WOULDN'T there be a convergence between morphology and genetic patterns in ANY case? Seems to me I'd expect that too, and that it doesn't prove anything about evolution, simply that similar Design principles are to be found at both levels.

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Do not confuse "unfalsified" with "unfalsifiable." The ToE is the former, not the latter.

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We can replicate many, many observations regarding Evolutionary Theory, of course.

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Some observations can probably be replicated. Just not the theory itself and not anything in the past.

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Remember, it's not the events which need to be replicated (although many experiments, such as gene sequencing, can be replicated), it's the observations that are replicated.

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It's the THEORY that can't be tested or proved or falsified, not particular observations or events.

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Remember it is the THEORY that I'm saying does not meet these normal standards of scientific method, not any given scientific observation.

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Yeah, what I said.

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So, are you saying that the hundreds of thousands of scientists over the last 150 years are complete dunderheads because they have never recognized that the underpinnings to their entire field of study was actually not scientific at all?

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See first comments above. No more idiotic than the scientists who accepted various theories over the centuries before they were proved to be wrong. Pretty much science as usual, and it can be pretty hidebound, but that's normal too. Yes, this is science in action. It has absolutely nothing to do with the theory of evolution though. It can be practiced quite well without the theory. One could certainly observe a mutation without believing that it must occur in a long line of evolution from species to species. I might raise some questions about whether this is actually a mutation or simply a natural genetic variant in that particular population myself, but in any case you don't need the theory to understand the genetic facts. It no doubt has a lot to do with the direction of inquiry and the terminology generated, but the actual body of knowledge of genetics itself, no. Not according to me.

What test could you perform to determine its age? Isn't radiometric dating the only possible empirical test and really, how does anybody know that that is reliable as it can't be tested either beyond historical time. Anyway, in a crime scene you have LOTS of clues that are testable and falsifiable. Not so much for the age of a frozen mammoth.This message has been edited by Faith, 04-10-2005 04:25 AM

Stage Left or Stage Right?Actually, it is hard for me to get this formulated properly, but it's not that there aren't things we know, it's that a theory about what happened can't be verified for sure because there is simply no way to test what happened in the past. Even in the best understood crime scene you can't have perfect proof of what happened even though there is LOTS of evidence to make inferences from and lots of ways to cross-check the inferences and build a really good case. But all you have in the distant past is, say, a rock with fossils in it. YOu can compare it to other rocks with fossils in them. You can describe what it's made of. You know pretty well how it got formed, out of what and under what conditions. But you don't have a way of KNOWING how those fossils got there or when. All that is speculation, theory, the stuff that can't be proved or falsified.

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I'm not sure how you can come to such a dismissive conclusion. I really don't think that you understand the significance of the evidence.

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Well, I said I might not understand it and that it is suggestive. and actually I was a little reluctant to come to such a conclusion, as it seemed awfully dismissive to me too, but unfortunately as I continue to think about it I simply keep arriving at the same conclusion.

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If I can pick up on the notion that the evidence only restates an original premise of evolution, that is that there is a heirarchy of morphologies. This is false, the original observation was that there were specific biotas associated with specific relative age groups. The inference being that biota A got to biota B via evolution. What I have presented to you confirms that a morphological ordering occurs in the rocks consistent with evolution.

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At first when I read it, it did appear to be saying something significant as you claim, but after thinking about it twice now I don't see that. We ALREADY acknowledge that "a morphological ordering occurs in the rocks" that is interpreted to be consistent with evolution. Seems to me you have only confirmed that the apparent morphological ordering that appears in the rocks is also reflected in detailed morphological comparisons between the species represented there. In other words, what you have confirmed is that the morphological relationships between the species as suggested in the rocks really ARE the morphological relationships suggested.The interpretation that it is evolution from one to the other that accounts for this ordering is no closer to being proved with your tests than it was with the reocognition of the ordering in the rocks in the first place. Morphological similarities that can be arranged in such a graded fashion just don't prove evolution from one to another. They don't prove it from the stratigraphic presentation and they don't prove it from the more detailed comparisons you have made between the same species represented in the rocks.

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It does so by noting that the stratigraphic ordering is actually what is expected by evolution, by studying the grade of morphological dis/similarities, objectively determined by cladistic methods. This is extremely unlikely to be the case unless evolution occurred (5.68*10^323:1).

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Not really. It is only unlikely if the judgments that were made of the apparent morphological gradations in the rocks were extremely faulty to begin with. The cladograms simply confirm the observations of such gradations that convinced so many of evolution in the first place and are so well known to us now, confirmed in other words the intuitive grasp of the ordering by the scientists who observed it in the first place. Not so. You are arguing in a circle. You are comparing the ordering in the strata with the exact SAME ordering of the SAME species, only in a more detailed and controlled fashion than has been done. You find that they are awfully awfully similar. Actually I'm surprised they aren't closer to 100% than they are since all you are really doing is comparing McIntosh apples with McIntosh apples.But just out of curiosity, what are the various morphological characteristics you compare from one to another?

I believe what I said, or if I didn't say it clearly enough will say it now, is NOT that we can't learn what happened in the past depending on circumstances, which you lay out, as I thought I said very clearly that of course we can know many things. The idea was that a theory about what happened in the past like the Geo timetable and ToE are not testable, that certain observations that support those ideas may be testable but in fact you can't test the theories themselves and can never verify {edit: meant "falsify"} them.YOu list evolution along with "Relativity, gravity, wave/particle duality of light, quantum theory, radioactive decay, Maxwell's laws, cosmological expansion," but what I would point out about these things is that they are not about historical events but about ongoing physical facts that are exactly what CAN be tested. It may not be possible to arrive at proof in many senses with those theories too, but they are in principle replicable as their content is ongoing, always available for observation.Historical events on the other hand are by definition past and cannot be replicated. The whole approach to proving past events is entirely different from what you can do with the physical phenomena addressed by the theories you list -- evolution and the Geo Timeframe are unprovable in an entirely different sense. I will have to give this more thought later but that is closer to what I meant than what you made of it.This message has been edited by Faith, 04-11-2005 10:40 AM